


fortune telling on finger bones

by Kintsu



Category: Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: Character Study, F/F, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 22:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21023162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kintsu/pseuds/Kintsu
Summary: Riko has heard of people who can read the future in people’s hands. Who, with a random scattering of knucklebones can tell you everything about yourself.Riko can't do this.Riko and Chika hold hands and learn about each other.





	fortune telling on finger bones

The first time they hold hands, the sun sets. Well - maybe “hold” is not the right word. It’s more like a gentle resting. Chika’s (short, stubby) fingers support Riko’s (long, slender) ones. Chika doesn’t know much yet about this girl, but the way her fingertips tremble scares her. The way they relax at her touch relieves her. 

They’re pianist’s hands. The fingers are nimble, elegant. Chika can picture them dancing over the keys - it’s easy when she already has so many examples already of how they move. The anxiety etches the shaking movements into her own hands as she cups them, fingers pressing a tune of worry into her joints.

It’s not fair.

It’s not, but Chika wants it to be. She holds the elegant hands, the ones with fingers longer than hers, the ones with well manicured nails that clearly have never been bitten or picked at, the ones with slightly bony knuckles that don’t at all change how comfortably they fit into her own hands. She holds them, and she wants to make them stop trembling.

* * *

The second time they hold hands, the sun has already long since sunk behind the beach that Riko is just starting to recognize out her window without surprise. Well - maybe “hold” is not the right word. It’s more like a tentative touch. She’s not sure at first if she even wants them to touch. If it’s okay for her to reach out, and allow someone to hold on to her. The space between them hangs heavy and empty, a gap that Riko is terrified to transgress. Chika isn’t scared, her hand cuts through the air, open and extending, and Riko reaches back too.

She doesn’t want to be afraid of this. Of holding out and holding on. She is though. There’s a fear in Riko, a fear that those hands will grasp and pull every part of her that she hates out into the open. 

But, even so, there is a warmth lingering on her hands, warmth where those fingers had pressed into. Even though the sun has shone strong as it sank, the warmth it let out came nowhere close to the kind that came from Chika.

The sun was gone for today, and Riko is tired of being cold. So she touches those fingers, holds them as best she can. She holds them and thinks of the warmth of a new morning.

* * *

The third time they hold hands, it feels like the sun will never rise again. This time, holding is the right word. Chika is glad for that. Riko’s hands hold her with a strength she’s never felt from them before. Without those arms wrapped around her, Chika feels as if she would sink back into the ocean. Through her wet clothing, Riko’s arms are warm and steady, and when they turn her around to bring her face to Riko’s, they hold tight and self-assured.

Chika can’t get enough of that. That holding.

There is little of the hesitation that existed in them before. Instead, comfort lies close to the bone, permeating the marrow and adding sweetness.

This time, it is Chika’s hands that shake, that waver and waffle on gripping too tightly - scared of cracking those bones and letting the sweetness out. The sweetness she doesn’t deserve to drink up.

Riko’s hands lift hers away from the salt water and up towards a cloud-painted sky that  _ will _ be sunny again, that will shine. They tell her to cry, to fail, to break down, and they tell her that the person who those hands belong to will lift them up again and again and away from the waves each and every time.

Chika knows that as well as she knows those hands. They are different from her own, different in shape and size and softness. But Chika knows them.

She’d heard it before, from her older sister’s minor fortune telling phase. Something about reading pasts (or was it futures?) in people’s palms. A lifeline, wasn’t it? Some sort of path sprawled across each hand.

Chika wouldn’t call herself an expert, or even a novice - that would imply she knew more than hearsay. But she feels the creases in Riko’s hands and  _ knows _ . She knows the struggles and the self-hatred, and she knows them because deep down they’re etched into her own lifelines too. 

So Chika will wail for now, and press those lifelines into her own. And maybe, just maybe, those deep carved canyons will lead them to where they’ll both be okay. 

* * *

By now, Riko has lost count of the number of times she’s held Chika’s hands. There have been long times, and short times. There have been high fives, tentative finger touches, one hand wrapping around and dragging the other towards something new. Times held in fear, in anticipation, in comfort. Times held for the hell of it.

This time, the sun spreads like butter. Cutting out soft outlines with its warm morning light as it rises, dripping into every crack between grains of sand, rooftop tiles, and the lacings of their fingers. 

Riko has heard of people who can read the future in people’s hands. Who, with a random scattering of knucklebones can tell you everything about yourself.

Riko can’t do this. 

She has no idea if the tiny slit of a knife scar on Chika’s index finger has meaning. She can’t tell if the whorls and lines in her fingerprints say anything of value. If the slow disappearance of the baby fat that used to cling to her palms and cushion Riko’s hands in their softness is a bad or good omen. If the peeling nail beds and bitten, jagged nails are irrelevant or crucial. And yet, in the sinew and muscle and tendons that make up these fingers, Riko can feel it. 

Potential.

There is a future written in these hands, in the way the pads of the fingertips press into her palms, in the form of bones moving beneath the surface of the skin. 

Though Riko has no skills to know what kind of future, she feels that there is one. It must be a good one. She will choose to believe that. To see it through.

Riko squeezes. Inhales. Holds tight. Speaks.

Releases. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all, it's been a while hasn't it?   
It's been a difficult past few months, I've been struggling a lot with some personal things, but luckily things seem to be looking up. It honestly feels like the top of my head has opened up.   
I don't have much to say besides, gosh. Do I love Chikariko.


End file.
